Danish startup Kanpla wants to help canteens cut food waste

News Summary

  • For kitchens, Kanpla offers what it calls an “operating system” for managing their whole canteen from a PC or mobile device, including creating digital menus, support for different payment types, collecting and presenting sales data, and more.
  • “We saw first-hand a canteen which threw out huge amounts of food at the end of the day.
  • “Additionally, they have the added complexity and issues due to menus switching daily, and payments working often through hybrid approaches that may include card, invoice, and salary deduction.”Kanpla’s seed round was led by Netherlands-based VC HenQ, with participation from a handful of angel investors.
  • These inconveniences led us to dive into the pains, finding an industry that was heavily behind on digitalization, with additional problems of forecasting, limited tools to manage guest relations, and a high degree of manual work for print and billing.
  • Last year, Choco hit the much-coveted unicorn status for software that digitizes the ordering, supply chain and communications processes for suppliers and restaurants.
  • Elsewhere, there are companies serving AI-powered forecasting smarts to help retailers optimize their stock replenishment, while others have built marketplaces for selling surplus or imperfect produce.
As much as 40% of all food produced each year goes nowhere near a human mouth, resulting in economic, environmental, and social costs of an estimated $2.6 trillion.While there are a multitude of so [+5879 chars]